An Environmental Puzzle Game About Family, Grit, and Survival. Grays roam the land, largely in the absence of human interference. These aren't your typical Zed -- theirs is a very different sort of apocalypse. Animals spontaneously transform into twisted, violent beings. The earth decays, collapsing into a network of abysses.

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About This Game

An Environmental Puzzle Game About Family, Grit, and Survival.

Grays roam the land, largely in the absence of human interference. These aren't your typical Zed -- theirs is a very different sort of apocalypse. Animals spontaneously transform into twisted, violent beings. The earth decays, collapsing into a network of abysses. The wilderness thickens.

It has been nine years since That Day when it all started. Pockets of humanity still exist, but are ignorant of one another. Within these isolated havens people try to live as best they can -- for even in a world so broken and dark, daily life must go on.

Darrell and Mary Williams were able to build such a life inside a five-acre fenced yard out in the country. They were even secure enough in their isolated compound that they had a daughter five years after the zombie-like grays appeared.

Life carried on as normally as it could, until another refugee on the run is killed during a nearby attack. Her son is saved and taken in by the Williamses -- who do not realize that this kind action will destroy their home and threaten their entire family. They find themselves caught in the midst of a struggle between two eldritch horrors, and the path to survival is anything but clear.

Key Features

Solve environmental puzzles under pressure. Figure out how to use the tools, traps, and weapons in each level to clear all the Grays.

Nearly 100 hand-crafted levels with multiple difficulty levels ranging between casual and hardcore, developed end to end by two experienced adventure level designers.

Complete bonus objectives for higher scores and gold markers.

Follow the story of Darrell and Mary as they try to save their family from a new and unexpected threat through in-game storytelling and painted-style cutscenes.

Guide different members of the Williams family through branching story paths that result in one of several endings. Depending on your actions, the story may end very poorly, happily, or anywhere in between.

Music and sound by composer Pablo Vega provides a chilling atmosphere for players to experience.

Included level editor: The same editor used to make the main adventure will let you make your own levels, cutscenes, or even entire adventures.

Local 2-player co-op. Using two gamepads, two players on the keyboard, or any combination of the above.

The Shattered Haven experience overall has a feeling of confliction. Like like the dev(s) were uncertain of what they wanted to make until the last figurative minute. There are underpinnings of a really great game here but its execution feels schizophrenic at times. I have to wonder if there were multiple developers involved that weren't on the same page. The overall mechanics aren't bad on their own but when combined together, leaves a rushed or incomplete feeling. It doesn't mesh together as well as it should. The difficulty can spike between easy and insane in an instant which creates an aggravating experience.

Overall GameplayThe graphics are ok for a 2D game, the music is pretty good but can be jarring at times when it switches style all of the sudden. Some tracks were apparently not done by Pablo, their regular soundtrack composer. Said tracks sound generic and completely out of place. Additionally, the control scheme isn't the best either. It doesn't feel intuitive though I find it difficult to describe why that is. I think if I had to point the blame at anything, it would be the weird inventory management system and wonky combat. Here's the problem with the combat: you have to get close to the monsters in order to kill/trap them. But those same monsters hurt you and knock you back if you get too close to them. Which can result in you getting knocked into a pitfall, other enemies or any other number of obstacles on the map. Which then probably results in death. It's incredibly aggravating to deal with during the game leading to the spikes in difficulty.

PC Settings and OptionsAll of the PC settings you expect for a 2D game are here and then some. Arcen is always fantastic at making sure that their games run extremely well. Additionally, this game comes with all of the settings needed. Separate volume sliders, custom controls, V-Sync, resolution options (though it should be noted that the art scales weirdly so you may experience black borders at certain resolutions) and the ability to change the Game Save Directory if you wish. It also has a level editor & the ability to mod the texture pack.

Final ThoughtsIt's such an odd, clearly experimental game that I'm not sure which way I should go on this recommendation. It's good...it's bad...it's good but it's bad....gahhh, I just don't know. I definitely think adding more months of polish with the ideas presented here would have gone a long way to making this game better. I'm only going to recommend it if you're looking for an experimental 2D RPGish puzzle survival game. But be aware that this game has a quirkiness to it that will cause frustration if you let it.

So, a freebie from PC Gamer Mag. Yay!Described within as "A zombie game for those who dislike Zombie games". I'm not the greatest fan of Survival horror, as most Zombie games tend to be, so I thought I'd give ths a shot.

It's... poor, to say the least. There is potentially a phenomenal story in there but the control scheme, lack of ingame information (or perhaps lack of clarity) and pre-8bit graphics let it down badly - to the point that, after a mere 45 minutes, I find myself not caring about the plot and just quitting without saving.

It's not difficult to start with but where the items you pick up change slots when you enter a new area (and re-aquire them, in the case of portals) means that your control keys change frequently and this adds frustration to an already underwhelming experience.

The concept behind the Greys is intriging however since they can only be hurt by iron. This means the things that you would typically find to use against a typical zombie horde don't actually do anything (like the steel axe). This unfortunately has the effect of starving the player of actual weapons, increasing the likelyhood of being touched (hurt) by the greys - a factor common in (and the primary reason I dislike) other Zombie games.

Other items that you would expect to use in a sensible manner are ill-concieved at best. The aformentioned Steel Axe for example. Good for smashing windows, bookshelves, tables and 'thin' trees.and... That's it. Wooden doors are immortal - as are other trees (despite being virtually the same thickness due to the low quality graphics). This lack of versatility grates somewhat, since you only get 4 inventory slots and they fill up faster than one expects.

I am glad PC gamer gave me a chance to test this. I wouldn't have even given it a second glance before and perhaps I would have missed out on something great. This is not great - it's barely even good. There are worse games out there, for sure but I don't think I'll be coming back to this one unless it gets a major interface, control and graphical overhaul.

From the developers of AI: Fleet Command and A Valley Without Wind comes Shattered Haven. Shattered Haven is a zombie survival game where the player is presented a variety of scenarios to overcome. The story follows Mary and Darrel as they flee from their once safe haven in search for their lost children. Shattered Haven can be played as a single player game or cooperatively.

The player is put in an 'overworld' where the player must locate various portals that lead to individual challenges. The player must complete all challenges in a given region before proceeding to the next. The overworld provides a loose framework for these individual challenges and drives the overall progression of the game.

Arcen, the developers, a small five man shop have developed several games since 2009; much more than the average indie developer in my opinion. Shattered Haven, like many games by Arcen, lacks polish. I have played a number of Arcen's games and they all have Arcen's signature mark of lacking polish. Shattered Haven is plagued disjointed and often conflicting artstyle, poor sound effects, bad UI design, and minor but persistent bugs. I am beginning to wonder if Arcen actually knows how to bring a game to completion or if they simply get bored of developing it and release it to market before it's truly finished.

The premise of Shattered Haven is good, and I actually did enjoy many of the challenges it presented me and I was somewhat compelled to keep playing but the game's lack of polish caused it to miss the mark in my book. If Arcen had spent a little more time refining this game it could have been so much better.

Shattered Haven does support USB controllers although I noticed there are some bugs. Overall I won't recommend this, although if you enjoy action puzzle games you might enjoy this.

I liked AVWW. I wanted to like this game. But AVWW started you off with fire punches and kept the cheesy dialogue to a minimum. SH does neither of those things.

In this game, you start by playing as some children who use Home Alone traps to fight zombies. Later on, you play as adults who do the same thing. Basically, the adults are as effective as children in this game.

The dialogue sounds like it was written by a ten year old who doesn't read much. "(Laughs darkly)" is actually part of an actual line meant to be taken seriously. The cutscenes aren't much better. "Kids are funny. It sure is dark. I'm going home" is basically what I got out of the first poorly voice-acted specimen.

The story is ridiculously rushed. Wake up, open a gate, zombies speedwalk in, silly adventure begins. At one point, a survivor simply guesses by looking at it that a portal will empty his inventory because they didn't feel like taking the time to let us find that out ourselves. Never mind the fact that he only saw the portal five seconds ago and shouldn't be accepting the fact that it exists yet.

And finally, the gameplay itself is boring when it isn't buggy. When you're not just ambling about and clicking the "next" button, you're trying to get your AI ally to get out of the canoe so you can advance.

Basically, if the worst of game-maker and rpg-maker got stitched together and stole the cute menu from AVWW, it'd be Shattered Haven.

I don't recommend this title because it feels too rushed onto the market. A.I. Wars was good, Bionic Dues is kinda whacked, but this game other than the music just doesn't control very good a lot of the time. And there's nothing really that will frustrate a player than a game that doesn't move correctly, and makes you want to uninstall it. There are too many better games out there for you to invest your time into. Unless you get this for a really nominal amount of money? Don't bother with it.